Save files are a fickle thing. Sometimes they’re exactly where you need them to be, but more often than not, they’re lost. Gone. Listlessly floating in the ether of your hard drive while caught between various planes of existence. BioWare has realized saves are lost more often than remote controls, and has created the Dragon Age Keep to make your past Dragon Age saves irrelevant.

According to a recent blog post, The Dragon Age Keep is a tool for both new and returning players to choose which actions they made (or would have made) in Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II. You can decide who lived and died, who your previous lovers were, and which roads you took to accomplish the task at hand. All this information is stored in the cloud, allowing people to revisit decisions that left them with a weary heart.

As for those who actually have their saves neatly tucked somewhere in their computer, BioWare was a little more vague, saying it would have more to say about the process in the "months to come."

Those interested in trying out the Dragon Age Keep for themselves can apply for the beta, though the post mentions participants won't cross the drawbridge until early next year.

Dragon Age Senior Writer David Gaider gave a talk at GDC yesterday titled "Sex in Video Games." It wasn't about "boobies and penises," as Gaider jokingly put it, but about how sex and gender are portrayed in games, and why the industry should take responsibility for the messages it sends. His conclusion is that the industry, at the very least, needs to stop actively repelling women and minorities, and is responsible for setting a tone which condones sexism.

Gaider began by criticizing some of the early decisions he made while working on romance options—he started with Baldur's Gate II, so he's had a lot of experience. "We censored ourselves," said Gaider, chastising the studio for initial trepidation over the idea of including same-sex relationships. Since then, he says BioWare has learned how its choices impact players.

"The moment broached the subject of romance and sex, we were saying something about what was acceptable, and what was normal, and who we thought our audience was," said Gaider. "We said that whether we wanted to say anything or not. We said it by virtue of what we included, as well as what we didn't include. Those were statements."

Gaider went on to say that portraying sex in games is difficult because the public views gamers as "mostly children," while the industry views them as teenage boys who want sexualized female characters. He counters these perceptions with stats about BioWare's playerbase and the ESA's demographics survey, which indicate a large female audience.

"Are we still marketing our games primarily to that 18 to 25 demographic?" he asked. "Are we all fighting for the same piece of that same slice of that pie? As nice as it must be to be that demographic—when you've got everyone banging on your door, trying to court you, it must be very pleasant—what's it like for someone who isn't in that demographic? We know they play our games. We can see that they do. OK, there's support for that, but it's not because anyone invited them to play. In fact, in a lot of cases, it's clear they play despite it being made plainly obvious to them that they're not the intended audience."



The problem, says Gaider, comes from falsely held industry standards and the phenomenon of privilege. Regarding the former, Gaider made no concessions for "conventional industry wisdom." It's "bull****," he said, after ridiculing the idea that games with female protagonists aren't marketable.

"Are we supposed to accept the opposite, that a game which has a male protagonist and sells well, sells well because it has a male protagonist?" asked Gaider. "What about the ones with male protagonists that don't sell well? Are those for other reasons? What would be the bar at which the industry would change its mind about female protagonists? Would we need a title to sell 10 million copies? Is that the bar?"

On privilege, Gaider recognized that it's a sensitive claim, but explained that's it's not about being sexist or racist—it's intrinsic ignorance.

"Privilege is when you think that something's not a problem because it's not a problem for you personally," he said. "If you're part of a group that's being catered to, you believe that's the way it should be. 'It's always been that way, why would that be a problem for anyone?'

"I want you to indulge me for a moment, imagine that since video games were first made, all major characters are black. Every hero. Everyone who does something virtuous, they're all black. Good white characters? Few and far between. Mostly minor—the white guy on the team. White female characters? Unheard of...If your response to that is, 'Actually I wouldn't mind,' I'm pretty sure if you talked to somebody who is in that position, they could tell you that you would. You don't have the context to understand what someone's going to...you have to recognize that, because that's privilege. Because you have the privilege to not have to understand."

Quotes from a forum poster upset that he is no longer the "sole proprietor" of gaming help Gaider make his point.

So, what should the industry do? Gaider doesn't think all games should have female protagonists, or be made to appeal to everyone. That's reductio absurdum, he says—pushing the issue to an illogical absurd where Call of Duty is a hippie commune. Being inclusive isn't about creating "a carefully constructed pastiche of genders, ethnicities, and sexualities," he said.

"I'm not talking about needing to go out and say, 'Oh, how do we attract women?' How about we just decide how not to repel women? I think that's all they're asking for, really! That's how you invite them, because we see they're already interested in playing, so welcome them to the table.

"And remember, even if you say, 'We're not interested, we're happy having this audience that we currently have. We sell a bajillion copies, we don't need—obviously our products do pretty well.' Consider that we influence the way our audience thinks. Even if you're not engaging in the discussion with that other audience you think you don't need, you are talking to the audience you currently have, you are influencing their attitudes. And those attitudes affect others."

Throughout his talk, Gaider fairly acknowledged BioWare's role in the issue, and criticized the industry's passive acceptance of sexist behavior. He also acknowledged that he has "plenty of privilege," and suggested everyone pay attention to others talking about the issue.

Player-directed love stories are typically accomplished with "romance options." The options are characters, and in the mechanic's simplest form, if you do and say the right things to an eligible character, he, she, or Asari will fall in love, bed, or both. But can love—and more importantly, good storytelling—blossom from dialog options and cutscene trysts?

In this week's Face Off debate, Tyler says love is a bad game, arguing that writer-driven affection is preferable to mechanizing intimacy. Across the debate hall, T.J. cherishes the player-driven relationships that motivated him to save universes. Read more opinions on the next page, and argue your side in the comments. It's what the internet is for!

Tyler: "Alright team, we designed an interesting, complex character, but something’s missing. What’s that you say, every libidinous teenager? Wouldn't it be neat if players could manipulate the character's variables with the goal of fulfilling their carnal fantasies? Yes! Instead of a character, we’ll make a doll that comes to bed and says 'I love you' when you squeeze it."

T.J: OK, I’m going to refrain from derailing this whole thing with an anti-neo-Victorian rant on how our society is irrationally afraid of sex, and make my case this way: relationships are a core part of being human, and just about any story about humans. Adding player romance to a game makes it feel more real and complete as an experience. Thinking about it from a gamist “manipulating variables” perspective is missing the point. And it’s kinda gross.

Tyler: What’s gross is connecting with Liara in Mass Effect, and then getting her in bed by skipping down an obvious, color-coded path. I’m not against portrayals of sex and relationships, especially not with blue monogender aliens, but achieving intimacy shouldn't be about choosing the right dialog options.

I liked bonding with Liara, but when we reached that inevitable moment of passion, our interaction went from engaging character development to an erotic fanfic on Tumblr.

T.J: And you would know what erotic Tumblr fanfic sounds like.

Tyler: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Fanfics on Angelfire pairing off Mulder and Evangelion. I watched scenes of glitter and Spock near—alright, I'll go ahead and lose this reference like tears in rain.

T.J: Please do.

Tyler: I'm an explorer, what can I say? Anyway, what I was saying is that alluding to romance would have been more effective than making it a binary goal, a hedonistic achievement. The latter cheapens the character and ultimately lets us down.

T.J: Well-done romance in games goes far beyond simple hedonism. To use another example from the same franchise: romancing Tali created one of the most emotionally striking moments in Mass Effect 3, and it had nothing to do with sex. I wanted to help her rebuild her home. I wanted to settle down there with her, and give her the life her people had dreamed of for so long.

Would I have wanted that even if she hadn’t been my character’s romantic partner? Maybe. But the impact would have been far, far less... impactful.

Tyler: I can’t believe you brought that up, you insensitive boor! Don’t you know what happened to me and her? It didn’t have to be like that, Tali...

T.J: I don’t care how things went in the Tyler is Shepard timeline, which is clearly the darkest timeline. And I think you just proved my point.

Tyler: Jerk. Well, you’re right that giving players more motivation than “save the universe because, like, you’re on the front of the box and stuff” is part of what makes Mass Effect great, and building a romantic relationship is an effective way to design that motivation. But is presenting a stable of romantic candidates the best way to go about that? I don’t think so. It makes my “relationship” the result of deliberate calculation, which ruins it for me.

In Half-Life 2, however, I don’t even talk, but the subtle tenderness between Gordon and Alyx is a one way ticket to motivation city.

Gordon doesn't have words, never mind dialog options.

T.J: You have a point with Alyx, but I think in a game like Mass Effect, where so much about the protagonist, as a person, is determined by the player, you should be able to choose who they are romantically interested in. And you need a few, varied options to make that a possibility. There is a place for doing it the Half-Life way, but I feel more personal attachment in games that do it the BioWare way.

Tyler: I’ll respond to that, but first we have to stop dancing around the real problem and just say it: I don't want to reinforce negative gamer stereotypes, but trying to ignore every opportunity to make an immature joke about “reaching the story’s climax” or “doing it BioWare style” is just killing me.

T.J: Based on Dragon Age, I don’t know that I ever want to “do it BioWare style.” But that just further illustrates my point that the sex scene is not the reward.

Tyler: Anything raunchy, salacious, or simply involving the letter “x” will motivate some, but I’ll give you that developers aren’t required to justify their intentions or gauge player maturity.

My real problem is that interactive storytelling is still clumsy. It’s getting better, and some decisions work, like whether or not to do space violence here, or save a space colony there, but building a relationship with tacky dialog wheel winks and nudges feels crude. I’d rather romantic intentions stay ambiguous or writer-dictated until there’s a game sophisticated enough to make it feel natural. Right now they just feel like dating sims.

T.J: It’s all a matter of perspective. Sure, the tech isn't there yet to simulate the depth and nuance of a real-life romance in a player-directed system, but you could say that about a lot of things: the way the space rifles work, the way the space villagers react to your presence. Games inherently require abstraction. And personally, I’m willing to deal with the level of abstraction we see in game romances right now for what it adds to my personalized narrative. Which, at times, is quite a lot.

Tyler: Nuh uh, games should be just like real life ...would be a terribly dumb rebuttal. Alright, so your point about abstraction is a good one, but I still think author-driven romance is superior. Put one of those little black boxes in front of your TV and play Ico. That was an expression of affection, if not quite the same kind as we've been talking about.

The point is, wooing characters who are programmed to be wooed just makes me feel weird. Unless, of course, I’m using “wooing” to mean "shooting up a floor full of suit-wearing dudes like that scene from 1992 John Woo film Hard Boiled". I’m totally cool with that kind of Wooing.

T.J: The only thing that could make that better is getting the girl at the end.

Follow Tyler and T.J. on Twitter to see day-to-day debates as they happen, and jump to the next page for opinions from the community...




@pcgamer They can hinder when it's forced or poorly written, but the best relationships can really enhance the experience.

— Eric Watson (@RogueWatson) February 13, 2013
@pcgamer They can be too heavy handed, clumsy and unnatural. Though romance is often just that, stories about it shouldn't be.

— Modred189 V (@Modred189) February 12, 2013
@pcgamer They feel forced and are ultimately unnecessary. I'd much prefer a well scripted single romance path that I could chose to follow.

— Garviel Loken (@SeventyTwo_) February 12, 2013
@pcgamer Mass Effect romance is no better or worse than what it wants to be: Captain Kirk and a Green Alien Chick/Ensign going at it.

— Jacob Dieffenbach (@dieffenbachj) February 12, 2013
@pcgamer if done right, they add a nice nuance.ME did it decently, but can be expanded upon without hindering the main story.

— Chris K. (@ChuckLezPC) February 12, 2013
@pcgamer If it feels like part of the story then fine. If it's an afterthought for content/controversy/publicity then it feels gimmicky

— Roman (@romanwlltt) February 12, 2013
@pcgamer brilliant. They make me care for characters. I like Garrus' bromance too

— Alex Filipowski (@AlexFiliUK) February 12, 2013
@pcgamer yes definitely. That's part of the reason why I love the Dragon Age series so much. Romance with certain char. Really brings you in

— Nick Ellsworth (@NE4Guinness) February 12, 2013
@pcgamer If I wanted to play a Japanese dating simulation... well, I don't, so there you go.

— HerpsMcDerps (@LoneCommandline) February 12, 2013
@pcgamer It forces emotional character interaction as you will invariably show favouritism. More emotion = more immersion

— AEON|Dante (@nzaeon) February 12, 2013
@pcgamer Three ME games (well, still a bit left of the third), and I have yet to even find any of the romance options. Art imitating life.

— Frode Hauge (@frodehauge) February 12, 2013
@pcgamer Depends on whether its tactfully done. A Nick Spark's story would murder an otherwise immersive game like ME.

— Andrew (@Drewoid13) February 12, 2013
@pcgamer They can allow for greater immersion and more dynamic stories.They shouldn't be the main focus but they should be in RPG's for sure

— Denholm (@DenholmFraser) February 12, 2013
@pcgamer The problem is that the romance is essentially between two puppets. I'm not sure you can replicate proper romance in games.

— Michael (@AchillesSC2) February 12, 2013

Everyone expects the Dragon Age 3: Inquisition, mostly because it's already been announced and therefore doubting it would be very silly. We know it'll be based on the Frostbite 2 engine, and thus has no excuse not to offer a rather bigger, more attractive world than Dragon Age 2's deserted city of chains. Everything else though, from story to design, is still under wraps. That's not going to stop us making a few wishes though, so here are some of the things we want to see...

Fix The Dragon Age 2 Problems, Obviously. You know the list. The re-used areas, the spider jump-scares, the empty streets of Kirkwall... Dragon Age 2's problems aren't exactly a secret, and while many of them can be put down to it feeling like a very rushed game, nobody wants to see them appearing again. Dragon Age 3 has no such excuse, with its development starting around two years ago according to the announcement letter, and no release date or even a single screenshot yet to be revealed.

Warning: Melee fighters in the first three rows may get wet.

A Song Of Guts And Maturity. For a series that supposedly owes such a creative debt to A Song Of Ice And Fire, the Dragon Age series - while not necessarily playing it safe - has always felt like a pretty sterile, unsurprising world. The first game established itself as something of a cliche storm when Loghain and his thunderface walked on to be the villain. Dragon Age 2, as much as it wanted to explore darker themes, often struggled by resorting to fantasy horror archetypes rather than anything with punch, with its attempts to do more - Hawke's mother for instance - often just coming across as silly.

In the wake of The Witcher 2, that's just not good enough. It's not a question of making Dragon Age a dark universe so much as actually living up to the darkness already written into it, instead of just claiming to be for adults and then cutting away to people having sex in their underpants or mistaking big gory combat hits for impactful violence. Geralt's controversy-shrugging adventures make it look like a cartoon in comparison, and without coming across as gratuitous. Well, mostly anyway.

The Inquisition title gives this sequel the perfect chance to really sink in deep with the demons and whatever we've already seen, but also tell dark, more relatable human stories of sin, corruption and consequence that put the player into tough moral places throughout. Speaking of which:

No Light/Dark Side Counter. Childish. Boring. Any system where you can commit atrocities and make up for it by handing over a few presents is a system in sore need of being ripped out and replaced with something more effective where deeds rather than integers are what counts.

'What's wron-' 'Morrigan just said she approved of my decision. I'm a terrible person!'

A Fresh And Motivating Story. Well, yes, obviously. However, specifically, more of a hybrid between Dragon Age 1 and 2 in terms of approach. Dragon Age 1 nailed the motivation, but the individual stories it told were fairly stock fantasy stuff. Dragon Age 2 braved new territory, but all too often gave little reason for the characters to be involved or even particularly care. Dragon Age 3 needs to do both.

Story And Game Integration. It also needs to actually play by its own rules. To pick one element, the Circle of Mages is an interesting idea in lore-terms, but one that the game routinely breaks over its knee by filling the world with blood mages on the grounds that mages are fun to fight, by having guards completely ignore you wandering around in a mage's robe and holding a mage's staff and having fireball battles in the streets of Kirkwall, and by the game simply not having the guts to instil spellcasting with the risk it's supposed to have. Mages can be taken over by demons from the Fade at any point? Yeah, right. Not if they're the player character of a 20+ hour RPG, they can't.

This kind of thing simply breaks the fiction, and even if you can find some "But Elves Are Nymphomaniac Nudists In The Lore!" type justification, makes the world far less interesting than if Bioware had actually changed things. Some things can obviously be handwaved. Making the entire plot of Dragon Age 2 unsupported by Dragon Age 2 can't. Dragon Age 3 needs to be built around the rules as established so far, rather than taking the easy road and hoping we just don't notice.

A mage? Who, me? Pffffffft....

Open World, Open Heart. The idea of setting an RPG in a city or other small, densely packed area isn't inherently a bad one. It doesn't however fit Dragon Age, with its more old-school, epic sweep. Let's see a map bursting with possibilities and secrets, that rewards exploration and puts new area types and cool things to discover around every corner. Oh, with one caveat:

No More Deep Roads. Dullest. Location. Ever.

Leaving Ferelden. Yes, yes, Kirkwall was in the Free Marches rather than Ferelden itself. The differences weren't exactly huge though, and this time it would be good to spread a bit further to some of the locations we've only heard of so far - chasing a heretic through the Tervinter Imperium for instance, or taking a trip to the corrupt court of Orlais. Provided that Bioware can find actors whose Orlesian accents aren't like nails down a chalkboard, of course. (This is far from guaranteed.)

Character Customisation. Commander Shepard was a great character, and there's no reason that she couldn't have a fantasy equivalent. Dragon Age isn't the game to do that in though, and Hawke added nothing to the game except for a bad British accent, some forgettable family members, and even less reason to care about what was going on in Kirkwall if you weren't (sssh!) a mage.

To get that "meh" though cost so much. Outright origin chapters aren't really needed, but race and similar choices were sorely missed - especially in such a fractured world. The nature of the story will obviously determine how much freedom there can be - creating a Qunari for instance for instance would mean immediate difficulties with the name field, never mind finding helmets that fit - and dwarves are tricky for a few reasons. Elves at least should be an easy enough alternate race to play as, and one with plenty of scope for extra political drama due to their poor social status in Thedas.

No more giant spiders. Say that Flemeth got rid of them. I don't care. Just ban them.

No Main Character Voice. For the above reasons, really. A fixed character having a voice is one thing - it would be silly for instance if Geralt didn't. When it's your own creation, the immersion lost by having them be a heroic mime is more than made up for by them not sounding like a complete cock/cockette. Once again, Hawke, looking at you. Over a whole RPG though, you soon get used to silence.

Party Customisation. Personally, and this is somewhat heretical, I prefer characters to retain and develop a unique look over the course of a game rather than everyone just ending up in plate armour by the half-way point. Still, as the head of the party, you should feel like you're in command.

Jobs For The Boys And Girls. As part of that, these slackers shouldn't be spending ten years sitting in a pub, hanging around at the campsite, or sitting in some mysterious void when they're not in the party. Let's send them out on missions, a bit like in Star Wars: The Old Republic, to earn their keep, practice their skills, and find more goodies and secrets. Ideally that wouldn't be purely random missions though, adding some of the tactical element of Mass Effect 2's suicide mission throughout the game and giving you a reason to switch around your team if your regular sword-and-board guy is elsewhere.

NPCs Responding To You Showing Up In Your Pants. It just bugs me when they don't. Anyone else always take a moment to check when playing a new RPG? Oh. Well, moving on...

Action/RPG Choices. Ignoring the dreadful waves mechanic, I didn't mind the more active combat of Dragon Age 2. With Bioware's resources though, it would be good to see a choice between classic, hardcore RPG combat and something faster that can be either more exciting, or simply skip to the next bit of the story a la Mass Effect 3's Narrative Mode. Bioware already made the (arguably bad) decision to split its audience between the two styles. Neither can really be left out of the next game.

STILL TOTALLY NOT A MAGE BY THE WAY.

Return Of The God Baby. Morrigan's son really needs to play some part in this story - even if it's only a side-quest that can be cut out depending on imported saves. That decision was far too important in Dragon Age Origins to be just thrown aside or consigned to a crappy bit of DLC that nobody played. While we're on the subject, David Bowie's plans from Dragon Age: Awakening really need to be addressed as well - a quick "Oh, yeah," line of dialogue doesn't count. In both of these cases, and the political chaos at the end of Dragon Age 2, it's not simply about tying off old plot threads - it's about conveying the idea that these stories mattered, so that Inquisition feels like it does too.

No More Starmap Design. Compartmentalised design (where the quest is secretly split up into intro/outro, four isolated zones and the ending run) is obviously easier on the designers than integrating everything. It's also really hard to ignore these days. The different parts of Dragon Age 3 should really mesh together to feel like a world, where some quests are isolated, but others draw in elements from around the world. At the very least, it would be good to see Dragon Age 3 blur the edges.

Fluid Politics. A good start would be a proper politics system, where tough decisions can actually follow you around and kick back at unexpected moments. Get a reputation as a liar? Good luck getting anyone to help the next time you shout "Wolf!" Alpha Protocol exists. Steal from it.

You look distracted. Is it my werewolves? It's my werewolves, right?

Separated Multiplayer. Multiplayer is inevitable, not least because Mass Effect 3's was so popular. That's fine. It shouldn't however have any impact on the single-player game, beyond - at most - minor cosmetic stuff. Certainly, no War Assets type system to try and force everyone into it. If it's fun, we'll play it. If not, we don't want to be coerced by the threat of getting the crap ending.

Built For PC. Consoles can play too, but for a Western RPG experience and all the trimmings, you're looking at the PC. The Witcher 2 raised the bar, and it's unlikely that The Witcher 3 will be any less. If Dragon Age 3 is targeted for current-gen console systems, it'll never be able to match up Even the initial batch of next-gen games it might be part of won't come close to what our machines can do.

It's not just raw tech of course, but better interfaces and desktop play vs. sofas.

DLC That Actually Feels Like It Was Designed To Integrate Into The Game In A Satisfying Way Yet Not Just A Chunk That The Core Game Is Lesser For Lacking. That.

And More Specifically? It's a very difficult line to draw, but there are possibilities. Instead of trying to give the main character more adventure for instance, fleshing out the stories of the party members. If they're not interesting enough for that, they're probably not interesting to be on the team.

Character Vault. Finally, a really small one, but a necessary one. Bioware has long talked up the benefit of keeping your saves. With Origin (and Steam, but I think we all know how likely DA3 is to benefit from that), the game itself should keep characters on file for use in future games. Dragon Age 3 should offer the chance to at least upload the gamestate for the next one and the DLC. The first two games should also offer some way of storing characters safely, rather than expecting everyone to back them up. This is something that should have been standard as of the Cerberus Network in Mass Effect 2.

And those are our ideas. What others can you think of?

David Gaider, Senior Writer at BioWare and a major creative force behind the Dragon Age franchise, recently posted a frank essay on romance sub-plots in RPGs on his blog. The manifesto, spotted by Eurogamer, explores the issues romanceable party members present, and explains why he doesn't advocate too much openness when it comes to who can get with whom.

"I dislike the idea of every character being sexually available to the player," Gaider admitted. "Not that it cheapens them, necessarily, but it would lend itself towards their objectification. Take the first Witcher game, for instance—I enjoyed many things about that game, but the collectible sex card mechanic? Ultimately it rendered every female character in the game into a puzzle to be solved ... As soon as the player is aware it’s possible, you are in fact encouraging them towards a certain type of behavior."

Despite this, he expressed his openness to exploring greater variety in romances through other methods.

"Adding an element of failure, for instance, or by having not all characters be available to all player characters (they’re attracted only to certain types, for instance)," he wrote. "Adding different types of romance: tragic romances, romances where your partner cheats on you, romances where the character is already involved in another relationship, characters that don’t know how to relate to someone else on a romantic level or aren't interested in such."

Warning: Mass Effect 3 spoilers beyond this point.

"Would doing romances in that way actually be popular? Probably not," Gaider concluded. "Take the resolution of the Thane romance arc in ME3, for instance. There are people who did (and still do) think that, having selected Thane as their romance, they should have been able to cure him of his illness and make everything better. Why? Because he’s their romance, and they’re entitled to have it be a happy one. Regardless of whether you think they are justified in feeling so, they do. I don’t think plausibility is really what they’re looking for.

"So that would leave us at an impasse… some might appreciate such an approach, and some might even enjoy the stories, but I suspect many who are looking for romance in their story are hoping for something more fulfilling… and would likely be put out if their choice ended up getting the short end of the stick (from their point of view) compared to some of the other romances."

We'll probably have to wait until Dragon Age 3 to find out just how this musing may affect the way BioWare romances are written. Until then, I find myself feeling a bit nostalgic about a certain red-headed Orlesian bard who lives about a 20 GB download away.

Face Off pits two gladiators against each other as they tackle gaming's most perplexing conundrums. This New Year's Eve edition is a chronological throw-down: which decade gave PC gaming the most? Podcast Producer Erik Belsaas says it was the '90s—the origin of modern PC gaming. Executive Editor Evan Lahti insists it was the '00s, with its speedy internet, better PCs, and shinier graphics engines.

Evan: The 1990s had the CD-ROM and the McRib sandwich. The ‘00s had Windows XP and two terrible Star Wars movies. I think the latter birthed better games: the Battlefield series, Crysis, Company of Heroes, BioShock, Dragon Age: Origins, Guild Wars, The Sims, Rome: Total War, Star Wars: KOTOR, and the best Civilization games happened then. What've you got, Erik?

Erik: Lucasarts, id, Ion Storm, Interplay, Blizzard: the iconic names that created franchises that we still discuss today. “RTS,” “FPS,” and “MMO” had no meaning before the pioneers of the '90s came along with some-thing other than sequels and rehashes: Baldur's Gate, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D, MechWarrior, Unreal Tournament and every LucasArts adventure game from Sam & Max to Grim Fandango.

Evan: This is going to devolve into who can name-drop more game titles, isn't it?

Erik: Pretty much.

Evan: Cool. In that case, let’s put the best we've got on the page. What are the top three games from your decade? Mine: WoW, Counter-Strike, and Half-Life 2.

Erik: Just three? How about X-COM, Fallout, and The Secret of Monkey Island. Timeless classics that we still play today.

Evan: Is that the best that the decade that gave us the Spice Girls has got, grandpa? The innovations of the '00s will last far longer. Half-Life 2 wasn't just the basis for the way modern action games tell stories, it’s the technological foundation for the most ambitious mods we have today and the preferred canvas for machinima creators. World of Warcraft’s meteoric rise brought PC gaming into popular culture, ruined innumerable marriages, and earned its own South Park episode. Top that.

Erik:Your great games are all parts of established franchises that began in the '90s. For that matter, the original Counter-Strike mod came out in 1999, before Valve turned it into a retail product! Take away the names that began in the '90s, the '00s would've created very little of their own.

Evan: Megabyte for megabyte, I’d rather replay Half-Life 2 than its predecessor. Likewise for Diablo II, Warcraft III, Fallout 3 and other major franchises that began in the '90s but matured in the '00s. I really think that the tech of the '00s (better operating systems, fast internet, faster PCs) produced better gaming experiences. EVE Online couldn't exist in the '90s. Team Fortress 2's dozens of free content updates couldn't have streamed down our wimpy modems—the same goes for 25-man WoW raids or a heavily modded playthrough of Oblivion or Morrowind.

Erik: You've got a short memory. EverQuest allowed 72-man raids. And before Oblivion and Morrowind came Daggerfall, which was amazing and heavily modded. Doom, the father of modding, came out in '93.

Evan: I’ll play your game, Belsaas. Here's my ace: Deus Ex, our most favorite game ever, happened in 2000.

Erik: Deus Ex is a good game...but how about StarCraft? Has any other game absolutely defined its genre or rallied an entire nation behind it like a sport?



Evan: I was worried you’d play the Korea card. What can I counter that with? The 100-million-selling main-stream success of The Sims? The booming popularity of independent gaming? ...Peggle?

Erik: Peggle? Well I’ve got...you know...uh...Carmen Sandiego. Fine. Peggle wins.

There are many great things about the Dragon Age games, but simplicity of purchasing options has never been one of them. In the run up to both games' release, it appeared as if you could receive a different in-game pre-order bonus depending on where you bought it from, the time of purchase, or whether you chose an even or odd day of the month to place your order. I think there was even a special helmet made just for people who had drunk exactly 13,964 cups of coffee in their lifetime.

Bioware are finally collecting Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II's many disparate items together, and will give all of them to you, for free, if you go to this promo page and log-in with your EA Origin account details. You don't even need to own the game, so if you're ever planning to pick it up in the future, feel free to stock up on freebies now.

In return, you'll receive 40 items of +3 this and -7% of that. You don't get any of the actual content packs with the giveaway, but it's still a nice bonus drop of loot. I'd go into specifics, but I've forgotten my enchanted socks of +5 Tolerance to Stat Trawling.

One notable inclusion is the Fan Reward Pack, a three-item bundle that was previously only available to people who went to the 2011 San Diego Comic Con. Sucks to be those guys - their reward has just become a lot less exclusive.

BioWare waxed artistic at the Animation Festival held at the UK's Bradford University yesterday (via Eurogamer) as part of a discussion charting the progress of gaming art throughout the years. It's certainly come a long way from poking a couple of dots into a face-shaped blob, but BioWare Art and Animation Director Neil Thompson focused more on how both painting pixels better and the meaty Frostbite 2 engine led to the Dragon Age 3 concept art snapshot he flashed upon the screen for all of three seconds.

The blurry image's contents seemingly show a figure with an altitude superiority complex hailing a cab in the middle of The Shire, but it's probably nothing more than an rustic Orlesian landscape. Still, I squinted really hard. For glory.

Thompson extolled DICE's Frostbite engine as a catalyst for greater artistic freedoms when rendering conceptual sketches, saying, "Dragon Age was done on the proprietary Eclipse engine. I think anyone who played Dragon Age 2 would agree that engine was starting to creak a little bit by the time that was released. Obviously, Frostbite is the Battlefield engine built by DICE. It's a beautiful, beautiful engine. And what we've found is an improvement with DA3, and the artists who were really battling with the Eclipse engine have just embraced Frostbite.

"The work they're doing now is stunning. I think the screenshot I showed earlier is pretty amazing. That's unusual for pre-production. Usually you don't get to that kind of quality until a week before gold master."

We learned earlier this week that Dragon Age 3's crop-topped brother Mass Effect 3 also equips Frostbite in its Engine slot, but BioWare hasn't elaborated yet on how exactly it's utilizing the punchier pixels. For Thompson, it's a breath of fresh, lens-flared air.

"It makes my job easier because then it's all about discussing the aesthetic and what you want to achieve," he explained. "When you're a character artist or an environment artist, you're focusing on a small aspect of the greater whole of the game. As an art director, you're concerned about the whole, the frame, and everything it contains and how everything sits and the consistency. An engine like Frostbite allows you to focus more on that rather than the technological challenges of just getting the damn thing to run."

Bioware have been talking about Dragon Age 3: Inquisition at the Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo over the weekend, as spotted by Kotaku and live tweeted by Dragon Age 3 producer Cameron Lee. The panellists revealed that we will definitely play as a human in Inquisition. "Backgrounds will be in DA3 even though you will be human," Lee tweets, "it's not playable but it does significant impact on the story."

Creative director Mike Laidlaw also suggested that we'll get our own castle, shown in the concept art above. Two other pieces of concept art were put up, showing an open plain and some overgrown ruins. Cinematic designer Jon Perry said that "one level in Dragon Age 3 is as big as all of the levels in Dragon Age 2." Check out the concept art below for an idea of how those environments are shaping up.

Mike Laidlaw also said that "customisation is going to be bigger than Dragon Age Origins." Dragon Age 3 will retain player choices from previous games and Lee suggests that we will get to see what happens to "some" Dragon Age 2 followers. The panel was also asked whether mega-witch Flemeth will return. "it feels wrong to not have a "little" Flemeth in your game" said Laidlaw, cryptically.

Dragon Age: Origins was all about the Darkspawn threat, but previous hints from Bioware suggest that the third game will focus on a world at war with itself. If you've finished Dragon Age 2, you'll have a strong idea of what that's all about. You'll also know why we're likely to be heading to France Orlais for Dragon Age 3.

“We’re looking for variety, we’re looking for space, we’re looking for scope, we’re looking for something cool, forgotten, hidden and lost,” said Laidlaw at a PAX panel earlier this year. “If we really need to go somewhere urban, let’s make sure it’s not Kirkwall. Maybe let’s go somewhere new, somewhere a little more … French.”

Dragon Age 3: Inquisition is expected late next year.